oppression

(Reproduced from the UCU national website)

The Turkish state is waging an escalating campaign against LGBTQ+ people and the organisations that defend them. Since 13 September, police have raided homes, venues and the offices of LGBTQ+ groups across the country. At least 116 people have been arrested across 15 provinces, with least 83 being held in pre-trial detention and more than 160 facing criminal investigation. A number of those detained are trans women, and there are credible reports of strip searches, humiliation and isolation in custody. When people gathered outside the Istanbul courthouse to demand their release, the police detained them too.

The Turkish government calls this operation ‘My Family is Safe’. Yet no family in Turkey is safer because a trans woman is in a cell, an HIV charity has been raided or an activist has been silenced online. This is a familiar authoritarian method: single out a minority, declare them a threat to children, and use the resulting panic to extend the reach of police and prosecutors over everyone.

In other words, this attack on Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community is an attack on us all. The justice ministry has instructed prosecutors in every province to act against content deemed contrary to ‘public morality’ and to block material on ill-defined grounds of obscenity. Hundreds of accounts belonging to activists, journalists and human rights organisations, Amnesty International among them, have already been blocked.

UCU members are living with the consequences of this crackdown. Turkish academics work in universities across the UK, and they are watching friends and colleagues detained while their own ability to freely speak, research and travel home is thrown into doubt. LGBTQ+ Turkish academics face that most acutely. We stand with them.

Alongside the British trade union movement, we demand the immediate release of everyone detained for peaceful LGBTQ+ association or advocacy, due process for all detainees, and an end to censorship and harassment. We call on the UK government to make urgent representations to the Turkish authorities and to act through the Council of Europe in defence of freedom of association, expression and assembly. We will work with Education International and education unions in Turkey to provide practical support to those under attack.

The Turkish government is betting that the rest of the world will look away. Trade unionists will not.